However, a few lines further on, Adorno introduces a decisive dialectical nuance into that original statement. Having emphasized that in this armed violence that involves no combat, the enemy is now relegated to the role of a “patient and [a] corpse” to which death is applied in the form of “technical and administrative measures,” he goes on to say: “Satanically, indeed, more initiative is in a sense demanded here than in old-style war: it seems to cost the subject his whole energy to achieve subjectlessness.”

Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, loc. 648